Originally posted by U2Bama:
You unfortunately rely too much on elementary school documentaries and Gene Hackman movies for your stereotypical views of the modern-day South.
Hmm...I wish my views made out of unrelated embitterness were from elementary videos. Half of my hometown is populated by people from two cities in Tennessee. I won't get into too many details, but some stereotypes are true, sadly. Of course, the South is probably great now. All the stereotypes went north.
I have reminded you a few times in these forums that the KKK is far more active today in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states than it is in the South, and that the few Klan rallies in Alabama and Georgia recently have been organized by grand poobahs from Pennsylvania, Indiana and MICHIGAN.
Yes, the Tennessee implants were instrumental in making the KKK quite active in our area during the Vietnam era. Luckily, it's not horribly active anymore where I'm at, and I think the last KKK activity happened 10 years ago back home.
And you don't have to tell me of the hickdom of Michigan. I lament it everyday.
Case in point: the Virginia Supreme Court recently had 2 cases challenging a state law banning cross burnings. The perpetrator and eventual challenger of the law was in fact the leader of a Pennsylvania Klan group.
Thanks for reminding me. The last case in my hometown was a cross burning outside a black family's home 10 years ago.
I think if you walked the streets of my neighborhood, here in one of the most solidly Republican counties in the U.S. (Shelby County, Alabama), you would be very surprised at the diversity of the people here AND the friendship between the people. Have you ever spent any time here in the South?
I don't doubt it. In fact, it's true. I did make my statement in bitterness; not of the South itself, but of the Southern implants in my hometown. So, in reality, it's not as much as I hate the South, as much as I hate my hometown and what it has turned into. As a result, I've turned into the antithesis of everything I think my hometown stands for. It's very amusing when I can psychoanalyze myself.[/B][/QUOTE]
Your statement about wishing the North had just "let the South go" and wondering how we stay together is extreme elitism.
Perhaps. Even I am not immune from being slightly prejudiced, as I've explained above. I'm just one of the few who would actually admit it. Of course, rationally, prejudices are stupid, so I'm working on that. As it says, "I like individuals. It's people I hate."
I guess I'm also tired of the fact that, seemingly, all politics is catered to and determined by either Southern states, Southern politicians, or Southern PACs. I mean, even our presidents are all Southerners (or Northerners pretending to be Southerners) now.
Of course, I should be used to the fact that I'm a minority in America.
So you would have preferred the Norht just let the South go and allow slavery to continue in the C.S.A.? That's not a very good human rights concession.
Well, if you read above, that's why I think the Civil War was best. If slavery and feudalism weren't an issue, I'd have been inclined to just let them go and see them sink or swim on their own.
Anyway, now I know I am saying this stuff in unrelated bitterness. I'm sure I'll be retracting this all tomorrow. I guess, for now, I'd be interested in seeing the reactions to what I have written in anger.
But, as I've hit a pang of reality, it's not races or people of certain geographical regions that bother me. Southerners, in themselves, do not bother me in the slightest. It's ignorance and small-mindedness that truly bothers me. Oh I'm sure people are looking at this ready to call be bigoted and small-minded now too. We all have our moments, and this is, surely, not my highest point. But I come before you as honest as I try to be, and if we are to truly make this world a better place, we need to confront who we are, what we think, and, hopefully, find out why we think the way we do. Covering it up in tight little pink bows solves nothing.
Who am I? A young, hot, smart, gay, leftist, radical Catholic intellectual who can't stand incompetance and demands too much out the society around him. If I could do everything myself, I would, but, obviously, I can't. As a result, I start sounding arrogant and cynical, depending on who I'm talking to and what day it happens to be. So, to those who dislike me today, it's just one of those days with me. It happens to the best of us. I am who I am.
Melon
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"He had lived through an age when men and women with energy and ruthlessness but without much ability or persistence excelled. And even though most of them had gone under, their ignorance had confused Roy, making him wonder whether the things he had striven to learn, and thought of as 'culture,' were irrelevant. Everything was supposed to be the same: commercials, Beethoven's late quartets, pop records, shopfronts, Freud, multi-coloured hair. Greatness, comparison, value, depth: gone, gone, gone. Anything could give some pleasure; he saw that. But not everything provided the sustenance of a deeper understanding." - Hanif Kureishi, Love in a Blue Time